SILENT GEN BEATNIK BEATEN DOWN AND STALLED

Exactly two weeks since my last post. I have not written nor rewritten anything creative in that time. I've been so exhausted by lack of sleep and debilitated by the intensifying painful side effects of the radiation treatments that ended a year ago this month that my mind is a dull blank day after day. I feel I've tumbled rudely into a tangible fragile old age. Frankly, I'm frightened by the prospect before me.

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However, I do have a plan. For the foreseeable future, I will set my writing aside and attend to my health, forgetting all else. I plan to exercise as much as possible and stretch my muscles and go to the gym, lift weights, walk as much as I can until I stabilize and improve my condition. I do also have an appointment on August 31 to address my current ill health with a urologist, exactly one year to the day when I received my last cyberknife treatment at PeaceHealth Hospital. I will make blog entries from time to time and hope I can complete a few more creative projects before my health stops me altogether.

TIMEX AND PROSTATE CANCER THRILL THE SILENT BOOMER

The odds have just increased "against" achieving my oft stated goal to get someone other than myself to publish a novel of mine before I kick the bucket. At age 78, my father was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Early into his 80th year, it killed him. As he told me, sad regret in his voice, "I guess I got the aggressive kind." I'm 78 myself and on Monday April 18th, 2016, my primary doc felt a prostate nodule. Today, Monday April 25th, a urologist confirmed the lump on my prostate. He said, "I can always be wrong, but if I was a betting man, I'd say it's cancerous." After a stool sample is checked, I'm to go in for a biopsy. Going to be a lot of probing and sticking of things up my butt.

I don't understand all my emotions, but, driving away from the clinic, I was in some way energized by the thought of facing my own death. Don't know if inspiration will continue, but I've begun a book of poetry, called "Up Your Ass".  Here's the first poem in the series.

DIGITAL EXAM

Your doctor feels something,

Then you feel something.

After that, you and the grim reaper

Exchange cell phone numbers.

While your insurance company

Stands by for consultation, you

Hear your digital Timex ticking.

I can't help wondering how much more interested an agent and book publisher might be if I tell them they're racing against time to get me into print and the fact that more than 250 people—maybe more once the news gets out—are following my anticipated death? Will they race against my prostate cancer to see who wins? Will I have the balls to include this new fact in all my query letters to agents? After my publication and death, will all my fellow writers mourn, "Damn, I wish I had prostate cancer."